High-Cost Public Safety Bills Face Hurdles on Suspense File

By Shaun Rundle, Legislative & Region Affairs Representative.

In both the Senate and Assembly, Appropriations Committees hold a hearing where they vote on bills with high fiscal costs to the State’s budget, usually exceeding $150,000, to implement. This separate hearing is known as a Suspense File hearing, and most bills which head there are usually defeated due to their monetary impact. This year, nearly two dozen public safety bills are slated for Senate and Assembly Suspense Files. The bills include those that would benefit law enforcement, while others would not and we hope to see them defeated.

The following are a handful of public safety Suspense File bills scheduled to be heard in prior to May 26th, a deadline for the Legislature when all fiscal bills must be heard in committee.

AB 39 (Bocanegra D) Hate Crimes

This bill requires, upon the conclusion of an investigation and after redacting personal information or personally identifiable information, every local law enforcement agency to forward a summary of any reported hate crime or incident suspected to be a hate crime that has been reported within its jurisdiction to the human relations commission of that jurisdiction, if one exists.

Almost 1,000 hate crime offenses are reported to the Department of Justice (DOJ) every year, not all are prosecuted.  If 60% of these offenses occur in jurisdictions with human relations commissions, and the cost to summarize and redact each report is $300 per offense, the potential reimbursable cost would be $180,000.

AB 284 (McCarty D) Attorney General: Officer Involved Shootings

This bill requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) to create an independent review unit, (comprised of three teams) to be known as the Statewide Officer-Involved Shooting Investigation Team (Team), within DOJ to investigate officer-involved shootings, but only to the extent that the Legislature appropriates funding for that purpose

Annual cost pressures to DOJ in the range of $8.5 to $10 million, to fund 37 positions statewide, for the three regional Teams. DOJ anticipates having to review 75 cases per year.

CPOA Position: Oppose

SB 10 (Hertzberg D) Bail: Pretrial Release

The purpose of this bill is to reduce the amount of people held in pretrial detention because of the inability to afford money bail and to require each county to establish a pretrial services agency that meets certain specifications. SB 10 provides that a person who is arrested and booked into jail for an enumerated violent felony shall not be considered for release until the person appears before a judge or magistrate for a hearing and states that a pretrial services report shall not be prepared unless the defendant requests a pretrial risk assessment and report.

SB 21 (Hill D) Law Enforcement Surveillance: Use Policies

Would require any public agencies that use or gain information from surveillance technologies, as defined, to develop a Surveillance Use Policy detailing the technology and how it will be used by the agency.  The policy would have to be submitted to and approved by the public agency’s governing body.  Surveillance Technology Use Reports would need to be compiled and posted publicly, detailing the implementation of the policies.  A new Surveillance Use Policy would have to be developed and approved before a public agency could request funds for, acquire, use, or gain information from a new surveillance technology.

CPOA Position: Oppose

SB 26 (Leyva D) Sex Offenders: Access to Schools

Provides that a person who is required to register as a sex offender, for the duration of the time he or she is required to register, who enters any school building or upon any school grounds without lawful business is guilty of a misdemeanor.

The topics presented give a range of issues that the Legislature tends to focus on, and while this does not represent the entire Suspense File legislation, these are bills that CPOA and our law enforcement partners have been actively monitoring.